Children who claim to remember a previous life have been found in many parts of the world, particularly in the Buddhist and Hindu countries of South Asia, among the Shiite peoples of Lebanon and Turkey, the tribes of West Africa, and the American northwest. Stevenson has collected over 2,600 reported cases of past-life memories of which 65 detailed reports have been published. Specific information from the children's memories has been collected and matched with the data of their claimed former identity, family, residence, and manner of death. Birthmarks or other physiological manifestations have been found to relate to experiences of the remembered past life, particularly violent death. Writing as a specialist in psychiatry and as a world-renowned scientific investigator of reported paranormal events, Stevenson asks us to suspend our Western tendencies to disbelieve in reincarnation and consider the reality of the burgeoning record of cases now available. This book summarizes Stevenson's findings which are presented in full in the multi-volume work entitled Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, also published by Praeger.

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?Ian Stevenson is the foremost researcher on reincarnation in this country and, indeed, the world....No one who studies his work can fail to be impressed with the carefulness of his fact-finding and evidence gathering and with the honesty and candor of his conclusions....If you are interested in the evidence for reincarnation, buy this book. For those cases which particularly fascinate you, you will want to examine their details in Reincarnation and Biology.?-Spiritual Frontiers

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Examines childhood memories of past lives in relation to physiological markings or abnormalities associated with past life experiences.

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Ian Stevensons book is a superb scientific exploration into the generally more esoteric realm of reincarnation. He has collected over 2600 reported cases of past-life memories of which 65 detailed reports have been published. It is correct, as one reviewer claims, that these reported cases are primarily from Buddhist, Hindu, African or Native American cultures where such phenomenons are more widely accepted than in the West. But this is natural, says Stevenson, as these cultures more openly will allow a child to speak about a previous life without being disbelieved or rebuked as they may be in the Christian West. Young children are very impressionable and will generally suppress whatever his or her parent or the culture does not permit them to believe in. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that there will be more such claims in these non-Western cultures to conduct such studies. One cannot accuse Stevenson of not following a scientific approach (instrumental injunction, direct apprehension, communal confirmation), his book brims with extremly detailed reports from children whose memories have been carefully collected and matched with the data of their former identity, profession, residence, and the way they died. If this is not believable science, what is? If reincarnation is a new concept to you, read and judge for yourself. If you already believe in reincarnation, read and get more rational reason to state your case.

This is basically the "Reader's Digest" version of a much longer, more technical work. Thus, the descriptions of some of the cases are very sketchy. Nevertheless, Stevenson's reputation is impeccable after something like 40 years in this field, and you can be pretty confident that he isn't seriously skewing the facts. He seems to be more up-front than in earlier works in acknowledging that reincarnation is really the only plausible explanation for many of these cases. The book focuses primarily on cases where birthmarks and other physical anomalies match up with injuries suffered in the prior life. The book is well-illustrated with photographs, and some of the cases are truly weird. Put this book together with something like his Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, and your theology will be sorely challenged if it denies the reality of reincarnation.

This is an interesting book. Much of it dove-tails with what Rabbi Yonassan Gershom has written about those who died during the Holocaust and have been reborn as blond haired-blue eyed Gentiles. Except that Dr. Stevenson's cases seem to lose their memories of the events in their previous lives at about age 7 or 8 and Rabbi Gershom's cases seem to be forever haunted by their experiences. One other thing I found disturbing about Dr. Stevenson's work is that the majority of his cases are from India, Burma, and Thailand, where reincarnation has been acceptable many centuries longer than it has been acceptable in our Western culture. It makes it much easier to doubt his cases than if the majority of his cases were from a culture that was less accedpting of the theory.

This is definitely NOT the best book from dr. Ian Stevenson. The author has lost his skepticism and most of his scientific impartiality. The majority of cases included in this book lacks strong evidence sugestive of reincarnation, with the exception of a few very good cases. Because of these good cases, the book is still worth its value, but overall it is not a great work. "Children who remember previous lives" is a much better book from the same author.